Tom Poti had heard it all before, about how his team would have no chance to compete, about how it was a mismatched group that was fated to land in a draft lottery spot.

Yes, the new Islander defenseman had heard that before, exactly a year earlier, in fact, when he was doing his business on Broadway with the Rangers.

“It was very much the same feeling inside the team when we heard all the negative comments,” Poti, who signed a oneyear free agent contract with the Islanders this summer after 231 games with the Rangers, said at the Garden last night before the season’s first Battle of New York. “We felt that we weren’t being given any credit.

“That made it a little easier to develop an ‘us against the world’ mentality.

People were questioning us the way they were questioning the Rangers last year.”The Islanders entered last night’s match one point behind the Rangers, who in turn had a share of first place with the Devils. The Islanders and Devils each had a game in hand on the Blueshirts.

So an Islander victory in regulation last night would have vaulted the club into the Atlantic lead.

“I’m not surprised at all at the way they’ve played,” said Rangers head coach Tom Renney. “When people were asking me about the Islanders over the summer, I said I was not going to comment.

“Who are we to judge another organization when we have our own business to attend to? But that said, knowing [Islander coach] Ted Nolan from way back, I am not at all surprised at how hard they compete.” Renney said that he and Nolan, back in the NHL after an eight-year hiatus following two seasons in Buffalo that ended as ugly as it gets, first coached against one another in the 1992 Memorial Cup final.

Renney’s Kamloops team prevailed over Nolan’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in that one.

“And I can still see [Greyhound] Chris Simon putting [Kamloops defenseman] Daryl Sydor in the parking lot with a hit,” Renney said.

Simon, indeed, has been reunited with Nolan on the Island. The winger is one of five former Blueshirts with Mike Dunham, Michael York, Joel Bouchard and Poti on Charles Wang’s team roster.

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Poti, a target of Ranger fans throughout his tenure on Broadway.

“If there’s a lot of noise, that’s great; I don’t mind.

“At least this time if I’m hearing it, it’ll be because I’m on the other team. So that’s something.”

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The Rangers entered last night having lost three straight, albeit one in a shootout and two in overtime.

“With other teams I might look at it that they’re on a three-game losing streak, but I prefer to think of it as a threegame point-earning streak,” Renney said, laughing. . . . Martin Straka, who left Friday’s shootout defeat in Buffalo late in the third with a tender hamstring, was able to play last night after skating hard in the morning.

Jason Ward, who was scratched Friday with an ankle sprain, returned to the lineup. Thus, the Blueshirts returned winger Ryan Callahan, who got 3:40 of ice on Friday in his NHL debut, to the AHL Wolf Pack. . . . Darius Kasparaitis was scratched from his 10th straight since his recall from his conditioning assignment in Hartford, while Thomas Pock was scratched for the sixth straight time and 21st game in the last 22.